


Head In The Stars, Feet On The Ground

by rosymamacita



Series: Drop Ship Camp [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Love at First Sight, Missing Scenes, Pre-Canon, Raven is a badass, The Ark Station, Unrequited Love, Wick is awesome, better living through engineering, eternal smart ass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-24 07:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4910305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosymamacita/pseuds/rosymamacita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyle Wick is used to being smarter than every one else. It makes him a cocky bastard, he knows it. Since he's joined engineering, he's met a few people who could keep up with him, and they are not all who he might have expected, and they have a tendency not to stick around for some reason. So he continues on being  the smartest person in the room, until he meets her. </p><p>Raven Reyes.</p><p>Wrench Monkey.</p><p>The universe will never be the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Force of Nature

**Author's Note:**

> I love Wick. That is all.

“And here is engineering, Mr. Wick,” Sinclair said as the door slid open. “This is where you’ll be spending most of your time, helping the other engineers collect data.

Finally, Kyle thought, engineering proper, where all the real stuff was going down. It simply wasn’t fair that they’d kept him in theoretical until his eighteenth birthday. He could design rings around all of his teachers by the time he was thirteen, but no, they had to follow their silly rules and wait until he hit his majority before letting him do something real world. He’d waited his whole life for this. He took a big breath, inhaling his future. He let it out again. 

The air in engineering was the same old canned, weak air as the rest of the Ark. He was inexplicably disappointed. 

He followed Sinclair around as his mentor showed him the various stations and introduced him to the various people. He barely paid attention. He already knew the layout of engineering and most of the projects and observations that were being conducted by each of the stations. As for the people, they didn’t really interest him, but he had perfect recall, and when he needed a name, he’d be able to pull it out of his brain.

So basically he was drifting along behind Sinclair, half listening, being disappointed that the universe hadn’t started turning in the other direction because he’d finally made it to engineering as an apprentice, when Sinclair stopped him.

“And this is Jake Griffin, head of engineering.”

This he paid attention to. A big smile stretched his face. “Pleased to be working with you finally, Sir,” Kyle said and surprised himself. He almost never called anyone sir, but Jake Griffin was the one who made him want to be an engineer. 

He’s the one who, while visiting the lower school science students, had told him his science project on oxygenating air with a combination of biological and chemical agents was brilliant. He was the one who encouraged him to pursue engineering. He was the one who stood in front of the class of twelve year olds and said, ‘The two most important questions you can ask are ‘why?’ and ‘why not?’” And it never mattered to Kyle that as soon as Mr Griffin left, the teacher had said that in science ‘how?’ was the question they should really be focusing on. From then on, Kyle had questioned everything.

“Call me Jake,” he said, and shook Kyle’s hand.

“Why?” Kyle felt like taking the word back the moment he said it, but it was too late.

Jake’s smile widened and he nodded in approval. “Because here in engineering, we need independent thinkers who are willing to go after a problem and come up with a solution, not followers who are looking for their boss to answer all their questions. Got it? That’s your job, Mr. Wick. Solutions.”

“Got it, sir—uh Jake.”

“Oh, and ‘Griffin’ is my wife, the council member. So I’m Jake. She’s the Griffin. It’s just less confusing that way.”

 

“Dad!” The shout was an anomaly in engineering. Too loud, too high pitched and moving too quickly towards them. “Dad!”

Jake Griffin closed his eyes and sighed as he turned towards the caterwauler. 

“What is it, Clarke? ” he said calmly.

A kid stormed towards them. She was too old to be baby cute and too young to be the knockout she’d probably turn into in a few years. Right now, she was just energy in motion, like a solar flare. The blonde girl in pig tails was fuming. “Mom is forcing me to pursue the sciences!”

Jake drew his eyebrows together. “But you love the sciences. I saw those anatomical drawings comparing the human body with other pre cataclysm mammals. You won the science fair with those.”

“Da-a-a-ad,” she drew out the world. She must have just finished lower school, and acted like it. What was she? 12? 13? That was when they tracked you for a career if your scores were high enough. “I don’t want to be a doctor like mom. I want to be an artist.”

Jake snorted. “Clarke. You know perfectly well that is not an essential pursuit, especially not for someone who got such high scores in science, mathematics, logic, spatial awareness and—“

“And creative thinking dad. My scores put me in the top of arts pursuits, too. I want to paint.”

“Painting is a great hobby, Clarke and I’m sure it will help you to be an even better scientist.”

“Leonardo DaVinci was one of Earth’s greatest artists.” Kyle found himself already saying before his brain caught up to him and tried to get him to stop. “…And he was a great scientist…” his voice faded out. What was he doing, interrupting Jake Griffin talking to his daughter on his first day in engineering?

“See, Clarke?” Jake said, not even mentioning the fact that Kyle was totally out of line. “You can be a scientist and still love to draw.”

“I was thinking it went the other way.” There was actually something wrong with him, Kyle was sure, because he was talking again and this time, there was no stopping him. “Da Vinci was an artist first, and it meant that he could imagine things that no one in his time had even considered. He came up with the helicopter centuries before anyone had the technology to fly. Why not study art? Creative thinking is incredibly valuable, on Earth or on The Ark.”

Jake only had a second to glare at Kyle, before Clarke thrust an arm out and pointed at Wick. “See, Dad!? Even the new guy gets it.”

“Clarke,” Jake said sternly. “This is not the time or the place to have this discussion. We will sit down with your mother tonight and come up with a solution. You are taking time from Mr Wick’s orientation.”

Clarke glared at her father with her lips pursed. “Fine. But you should listen to this guy,” she jabbed her thumb over her shoulder in Kyle’s direction. “He’s got ideas.” Then she flounced out. 

Jake watched her go. Kyle watched her go. The entire damn engineering department watched her go.

“That’s my Clarke,” Jake said. “Sorry about that. Let’s get back to work.”

“It’s no problem,” Kyle said, finding himself suddenly energized. Who would have guessed that the most exciting part about his first day of his apprenticeship would be meeting some force of nature kid.


	2. An Elegant Solution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle Wick was a dreamer, he knew it, but that's why engineering needed him, so he could come up with ideas that no one else had. Like his lunar station idea. They liked his plan so much they had him scouring the Ark for parts.
> 
> He was sure that he'd find the parts he needed in Factory, but all he found was a cadet who asked him questions that started his mind turning.

“Yeah,” Kyle said, “this stuff won’t work.” He slammed closed the panel and sat down on the floor of the storage room in Factory.

“Excuse me?” the guard assigned to him said.

Kyle eyed the guy eyeing him. “It can’t be used to build a new station. This stuff is just all wrong. Too old. Parts are corroding. We can get the mechanics to patch holes, but corrosion? That’s another story. The integrity of the structure is compromised—“ The guy squinted at him. “Never mind. I just talk shop, sometimes, even when there’s no one to talk shop with.” Before he joined engineering and moved to GoSci, his parents used to complain about it all the time, even though they were both electrical technicians and understood what he was getting at. They used to joke that all the electricity on Tesla had supercharged his brain so it never turned off.

He turned around to fasten the panel. Wouldn’t do to have someone crawling around in corroded parts. Damn. He thought this mostly unused part of Factory would yield some salvageable parts. But he was wrong. 

“New station?”

Kyle turned around to look at the guard again. Surprised not only that he’d been paying attention to the ramblings of some GoSci geek, but also that he’d understood. 

“They’re building a new station?” 

“No.” He sighed. “We’re not building a new station, especially if we can’t even find any decent parts. Bah. I’m not gonna lie. I’m disappointed.”

“Were they going to build a new station?”

He leaned up against the wall and propped his arms on his knees, the screwdriver hanging loosely in his grip. “It was nothing. Just my stupid thesis project. I designed a lunar station. I mean, my idea is that the Ark is great, but it’s a pretty fragile bubble to hold the entirety of humanity. There should be some redundancy somewhere, right? Some back-up to carry on if the Ark experienced, say, catastrophic failure. Right? So it just made logical sense to me. Yeah, it’s not perfect. Without rotation, gravity would be much lower, and that would cause it’s own problems, but it would be enough to house a solid population until we could get back to the Earth.”

“Catastrophic failure?” 

Kyle was beginning to wonder if the guard was simple, the way he pretty much just repeated words that he’d already said. “It’s just a failsafe. A back up. It’s just smart. It doesn’t mean that there is catastrophic failure.”

“Then why did they send you down here to look for parts? It sounds like they want you to build your thesis project.”

“Well, theoretically.”

“It’s not a theory anymore if they want you to find the parts to make it.”

Kyle blinked. Okay. So he wasn’t simple. “What was your name again, guardsman?”

“Blake,” he said. “Cadet Blake.”

Kyle got to his feet and stuck out his hand. Blake looked at him somewhat suspiciously. For a minute, he wondered if Factory guards were allowed to shake hands with GoSci geeks. But then again, Kyle wasn’t from GoSci, he was from Tesla, and Tesla folks didn’t much care where you were from as long as you could make the circuit go. 

“Nice to meet you. I’m Kyle Wick. Engineering.” Kyle shook his hand with extra vigor. Screw status. This guy was curious and asked good questions.

“I take it they passed your thesis if they want you to build your station on the moon.”

“I passed, yeah. I mean, I was kind of surprised when they tapped me to investigate whether we had the parts to implement it. That’s a lot of resources they’re willing to invest into a redundancy plan.”

“To help with over crowding on the Ark.”

Kyle laughed.

“What?” Blake asked suspiciously.

“The Ark isn’t over crowded.”

“What do you mean? That’s why we have that one child rule. Because there’s no room for more people on the Ark. It’s over crowded.”

“No. Not at all. We used to have almost twice the population. That was over crowded. The one child rule is to reduce the population. We’ve got space. Approximately thirty percent of every station is closed off, shut down, de-oxygenated.”

“If we have room, then why do we need to reduce the population?”

“It’s the resources that are limited.” Kyle said. “Water, air, food.”

Kyle saw the shock on Blake’s face. Suddenly he wondered if he should have been telling some cadet from Factory that there wasn’t enough air on Ark Station. 

“Don’t worry. Engineering is always on top of solutions to keep the Ark viable.”

“Like building a redundancy plan on the moon.”

“It’s an elegant solution,” he said defensively at the slightly doubtful tone in the cadet’s voice.

Blake compressed his lips. “It’s a good thing you’re so much smarter than me. I didn’t even know we had a problem.”

Kyle felt his forehead wrinkle up as his brain swirled. There was something there that he couldn’t quite latch onto. He’d let it cook in his mind for a while and sooner or later, he’d figure it out. That was the way his mind worked. “Yeah. I guess I’d better be heading back to GoSci now. Factory was a bust.”

Blake nodded and opened the door with a key card. The door whooshed shut behind him and he called in on his radio, saying they were done. Kyle could almost hear the oxygen in the big underused long-term storage room being sucked back out and shunted into other parts of Factory. And he knew that was his imagination, because the door was an airlock door. He couldn’t hear anything on the other side of that door, in the sealed off portion of Factory. 

Blake escorted him through the corridors without much discussion, until they got to the gate of GoSci.

“I hope you find your parts.” He looked like any guardsman, but his eyes focused on Kyle.

“Heading to Mecha tomorrow. There’s a vehicle graveyard in one of the bays that I have high hopes for.”

“Good. Take care of that. I’m suddenly feeling like I want a back up plan.” He stood there, his hands crossed behind his back as he waited for Kyle to dismiss him. 

“Why do you think I need an escort through Factory?” Kyle asked, out of nowhere. Even he didn’t know where that question came from.

Cadet Blake raised an eyebrow, surprised. “I’d say it’s because Ark Station is not as stable as some people might want us to believe, and it’s not just about mechanical parts.”

“What?”

Blake never had a chance to answer. A crowd of people pushed through, end of shift. 

Kyle stood back, and nodded. “Good to meet you Cadet Blake.”

“Good luck with your project, Mr Wick,” he said, and then Wick turned and went back to GoSci, with more questions than he had answers.

***

About six months later, when they found the floor kid, Octavia Blake, skyboxed her and floated the mom, he remembered the conversation with the guard. Bellamy Blake he now knew. Demoted to janitor. 

Kyle particularly remembered Blake’s focus on the lunar station as a solution to what he believed to be the over-crowding problem and its subsequent one child rule. Now that he had more information, he could see what Bellamy had been getting at. A lunar station, away from the Ark, somewhere new, maybe where his second child sister could go and not live under a floor.

It wouldn’t have worked. There was almost no way they could have gotten the girl onto the station without drawing the attention of the council, and then they still would have floated the mom, and probably Blake, too for trying to sneak her off the Ark, and anyone who helped them, too. It was a nearly impossible plan. So why did his brain keep going over various scenarios, trying to make it work?

It didn’t matter anyway. The lunar project had been a failure. They simply didn’t have enough scraps to cobble together a working station on the moon. They had no resources to fabricate new parts. His thesis remained theoretical. 

Right now, they had him working on a project mining asteroids for metals and minerals. It wasn’t his project. It wasn’t elegant. It was ugly and ungainly and would take years to supply the shuttle, travel to the asteroids, build the mine, extract the materials and bring it back. Finding the resources to outfit and man a ship capable of —

He sighed and turned back to his calculations. It was a clunky plan but it was the best thing he had to work with, if the lunar station was ever to see reality. And somehow, he knew it needed to see reality.

He worked the numbers with only part of his attention. With the rest, he imagined the lunar station in his head, constructed and functional, a haven for the last of humanity. He imagined walking through the corridors he designed, with Bellamy Blake, his sister by his side, discussing how a century in space can cause instability in just about anything that was meant to be on the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They coulda been friends, I tell you! Strolling the lunar station, with Octavia at their heels, yapping like a puppy.


	3. Problem, Mr Wick?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kyle Wick was annoyed. 
> 
> Ever since Jake Griffin had been floated, Engineering had been a mess. Sinclair had pulled him off of his long term projects to work on short term stuff that was nothing more than a bandaid, and now he was throwing a partner at him. 
> 
> As if some newbie Mecha, some monkey with a wrench banging on crap until it fit, could actually keep up with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Wick. You're so cocky. You really could use someone to take you down a peg or two. 
> 
> I wonder who it could be?

The dirty looks Kyle sent Sinclair didn’t seem to faze him at all. 

“Problem, Mr Wick?” Sinclair said, almost wearily. 

“Nothing, Sir,” Kyle said and subsided. It wasn’t Sinclair’s fault, really. Everything was fucked up since they floated Jake Griffin. Sinclair was trying to hold together the whole engineering department, and frankly, it seemed like they had a heavier work load than ever. There was certainly no time for long term, projects like mining asteroids so that they could get the resources for new builds, like exodus ships, or, oh who knows, lunar settlements?

It was short sighted, is what it was. Such a focus on immediate projects at the expense of the jobs that could really help them out in the long run. Sinclair had him running specs for another project over on Agro with algae. He didn’t see how this would be a long term workable solution to anything.

He looked up to shoot Sinclair another dirty look behind his back, but instead, Sinclair was staring at him, with a speculative look.

“What?” Kyle said. He didn’t even worry that his outbursts were not protocol. Sinclair knew him, and he knew what his brain could do. 

“How would you feel about a partner?”

Kyle snorted.”Who? Gregson? He just wants to go over all the same tired designs that everyone has ever used. Moving a screw over a centimeter isn’t going to improve the design.”

“No. You need someone who can keep up with you, someone with fresh ideas.”

“Exactly. Who are you going to get who can keep up with me?”

Sinclair pressed his lips together. “Did anyone ever tell you this is not one of your best qualities?”

“Only everyone. But they put up with me because I’ve got the brain.”

Sinclair shook his head. “Yeah. You’ve got the ideas, but you need to work on the implementation.”

“I would if you could get me the resources!” He knew his voice was too loud, but he kept banging his head against the same problem. He pulled it back. “Sometimes I imagine all the machinery that must be sitting on earth, just rusting away in old factories. I think if we could get down there and bring it back up, all our problems would be solved. We treat the earth like a hostile environment, just like the moon. Why not space suit it up and raid some old mechanical plant. How hard would it be to retro fit one of those old exodus ships into a shuttle. Or hey, why not go to Cape Canaveral? You know they’ve got bunkers full of old space ships.”

Sinclair was nodding along to his brainstorming. 

“I’m definitely getting you a partner. There’s this Mecha, just graduated—“

“Mecha!” Kyle said in disgust. “Are you kidding me? You want to saddle me with some monkey with a wrench who bangs on crap until it fits?” He didn’t normally care where a person came from, but he didn’t want to work with a Mecha. They were so uncreative they might as well all be walking around IN the box. All the time. Nothing but In the box.

“—With the first perfect score on the ZeroG test since they’ve been giving it.” Sinclair held out his tablet. “Look at her scores.”

Kyle tossed Sinclair a doubtful look, but scores were scores. And hers were great. He swiped and took a look at the rest of her academic history. 

“That’s private, Mr. Wick. You are not supposed to have access to her—“

“I need to know who I’m going to be working with.” He swiped through build after awesome build. Each project impressed him more. There were no plans, no precise blueprints with reams of references, no essays analyzing the benefits and draw backs, just… he stopped at a tiny robot she’d made to clean out the H20 tanks. When she was twelve.

He held the tablet out to Sinclair. “She did that all on her own? At 12?”

Sinclair nodded. “They still use an upgraded version of it in Agro. It doesn’t disturb the tilapia as much as—“

“She’s no wrench monkey. Why isn’t she in engineering?”

“She’s good at what she does. She can fix anything and if she can’t, she’ll take it apart and turn it into something else. And she can make anything out of scrap metal. No one ever thought to move her to GoSci, she was all practical. Plus,” he shrugged, “she’s from Mecha Station. Her mom is… well she didn’t really have anyone on her side, as far as I can tell. Maybe something was going on with her when she was being tested for aptitude. Her scores then certainly don’t reflect her abilities now.”

“Ok,” Kyle said. And his words were nowhere near what he was feeling. He wanted to work with this kid so badly his fingers were twitching. What she could do with a pile of junk was outstanding. He might be half way in love with her brain. “I’ll work with her.”

“I’m glad I have your approval.” Sinclair looked at him with an absolutely straight face. 

Kyle rolled his eyes at his former mentor. “Come on. When is she coming? I have some projects I could use her brain on.”

“Actually, I have a project for the two of you. And I’ll tell you about it together, when she gets here. Until then, I need to…” he paused. 

It was an ominous pause. “Oh no, what?”

“I need to warn you.”

“This is not going to be good.”

“She has a temper. She’s gotten into a few altercations lately, nothing serious, but—”

“So you’re going to put me on a project with a lunatic.”

“No. Her psych evals are great. Very resilient girl. But I told you her mother wasn’t there for her— well, apparently it was pretty bad, she was neglected…”

“And you thought me skimming through her school records was a violation of privacy?”

“I just need you to understand. When her mother was neglecting her, she turned to a neighbor boy, he helped her out, stabilized her, made sure she got fed.”

Kyle was starting to get mad. “Why the hell wasn’t her mother feeding her? Why didn’t someone in Mecha do something about that?”

“It’s Mecha. Things fall through the cracks.”

“Oh, we’re letting mechanical geniuses fall through the cracks now, are we?” He didn’t know why his voice was getting so loud when Sinclair had nothing to do with this kid’s mother 5 years ago. 

“We might have that neighbor boy, her boyfriend, to thank for her not falling apart.”

“Good. We should thank him.”

“Except we can’t. He’s in the skybox. He’s the Spacewalker.”

“Well, shit.” Kyle suddenly had nothing to say. That was the biggest scandal on the Ark since…well since Jake Griffin was floated and his daughter was skyboxed. 

The Spacewalker. He’d wasted 3 months of air on that jaunt and then said he just wanted to get out of the tin can for a while. How could a girl with the intelligence to make the builds he’d seen possibly want to spend time with a dumbass who was willing to waste precious air just for a joyride. It didn’t make sense. 

But then he thought about the neglected girl taken care of by the neighbor boy. How could a boy who took care of a lonely girl when he didn’t have to be so callous as to risk all that air on a spacewalk? That didn’t make any sense either. 

What did make sense was that lonely neglected girl who lost her one sense of stability in her life, tossed into the skybox for being a criminal dumbass, was probably in a whole hell of a lot of pain right now. 

“I suppose you want me to tone down my natural charm for her, huh? Maybe take her under my wing and make her feel cared for? Be sensitive?”

“As usual, Mr Wick, you are insightful.”

“As usual, chief. So, when will I get to meet this partner of mine?”

“She should be along any minute.”

“Well you sure gave me some advanced notice.”

“You do better when you don’t have time to think too much on a thing.”

“Hey, that’s not—“

The door wooshed open behind him.

“Reporting to engineering, sir.” 

Wick heard her voice. This was her. Of course it was. He readied himself to see a trembling wreck with doe eyes and tears. 

“Kyle Wick,” Sinclair said. “I’d like you to meet Raven Reyes, your new partner. “ Kyle turned. 

There was no trembling. She was not a wreck. A slip of a girl stood there, feet braced and chin jutting out, ready for a fight. She held onto the wrench in her utility belt as if it were a weapon. 

She was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen. Doe eyes she had, but there were no tears. Instead, they were full of electricity and intelligence. 

Wait. He was wrong. There was trembling. But it was all his own. He clenched his hands to still them. His heart swelled to fit his entire chest and he could feel his pulse beating in his ears. She narrowed her eyes at him, as if she was expecting him to challenge her right to be here. As if she WANTED him to challenge her. 

“Welcome to engineering, Wrench Monkey,” he said before he had planned to say anything at all.

He heard an exasperated sigh from Sinclair but couldn’t spare a bit of attention for him. He had none left for anything but Raven Reyes. He was in love. 

Shit.


	4. Best Laid Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sinclair wants Wick and Raven to come up with solutions to impossible problems. 
> 
> Wick is not so sure they can work together. First of all, she just wants to bang on things with her wrench until they fit, without a plan. Secondly, he's head over heels in love with her.
> 
> Raven ignores him completely... until he challenges her ideas with even better ideas.

“You want us to what?” Kyle stared at his mentor, disbelieving.

“I’ll need to get out there to see what I have to work with,” Reyes said, focused on Sinclair’s insane plot.

“What? No! Have you lost your mind, boss?”

“Not at all, Mr Wick,” Sinclair said. “I want you to dismantle the unused section of Arrow Station and use it to create an Ark-wide O2 scrubber.”

“No way. Talk about weakening the integrity of a structure. You put all of Arrow at risk with that.”

“When can I schedule a walk?” Reyes said, pretty much ignoring Kyle completely.

“A walk? You think you’re just going to be able to stroll around Arrow, ON THE OUTSIDE, and tell which parts you can pull off and re-use.”

She finally looked at him. Those intelligent eyes were looking at him with disdain. “Yeah.”

“Uh, how about some blue prints?”

“I don’t need blue prints. I know how Arrow works. I know what parts are structural.”

He blinked at her. “Listen up, Wrench Monkey, you are not banging on Arrow station to see what fits.”

She put one hand on her hip and cocked her head at him. “What?”

“You heard me. Put that wrench back in your belt. I’m not letting you go out there and experiment on a station where people live. You need to know what you’re doing first and plan accordingly. There have been almost a hundred years of repairs and adjustments. You have to look at the blue prints and plans of what we have available. And then plan out what we might need for our future project.

She snorted. “You and your plans. Don’t you know plans are useless if they are nonfunctional?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I know about your lunar station. You think it’s so genius, but how is it at all genius if it can’t ever be done?

Kyle took a step back. Offended. Truly offended. “It’s elegant.”

Raven laughed musically. His heart took a leap. If he hadn’t been so offended by her completely erroneous attack, he would have melted right down onto the floor at her smile. “A fairy tale castle in the sky.”

“So you think it’s elegant, too.”

The smile reached her eyes. “Impossible! And what was that plan to mine the asteroids? Good lord. Ridiculous waste of time and energy for the pay out of what? Some rocks? Some metals? That still need to be processed. Who thought up that?”

“Right?!” He looked at Sinclair, bursting. “This is what I was telling you.”

Raven turned to Sinclair accusingly. “Whose plan was that monstrosity?”

“Gregson!” Kyle said.

“Gregson is an idiot. You should have brought me in a lot sooner.”

“You just turned 18, Ms Reyes.” Sinclair said.

“It’s not as if I got smarter the day after my birthday. Use the resources you have, even if they don’t fit your plans.” She shot a meaningful look at Kyle.

“You make a valid point, Ms Reyes,” Sinclair agreed. “But if we could get back to the issue at hand. Arrow Station.”

“Great,” Raven said. “Let me suit up. Let’s take it apart.”

“Structural integrity, Wrench Monkey!” 

“You worry too much, Wick. I know what I’m doing.”

“But what if something goes wrong? What if you make a mistake?” It was her turn to look truly offended. “Sure, yeah, yeah, you’re a genius, but even geniuses make mistakes. And are you willing to gamble on the lives of everyone in Arrow station that you won’t make a mistake? We’d be better off migrating all the residents of Arrow to the closed off parts of the other stations and using the whole of Arrow in its entirety.”

This time when she looked at him, it was as if she was looking at him for his structural integrity, as if she really saw him for the first time. “Yes,” she said. “That’s it. That’s how we get your lunar station. Arrow IS the lunar station. We don’t carve it up for scraps, we use the whole station, set it down on the moon. Reconfigure it.”

Kyle’s heart no longer fit in his chest. It now resided with the girl.

“Use Arrow Station for the lunar project,” he said in wonder. And it was like some magical fairy had come down and answered all his prayers. He couldn’t stop staring at her. She was staring back.

Sinclair cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt, Mr Wick, Ms Reyes, but you need to get back to the issue at hand. O2 scrubbers. That’s the priority. The lunar station has been tabled for a reason. Please stay on track.”

“But it would work!” “This is how we get the resources!” Kyle and Raven shouted at Sinclair at the same time.

“Nevertheless,” Sinclair said, with utter calm. “Your assignment right now is the O2 scrubbers. We can revisit the lunar station once the scrubbers are up and running. Understood?”

“Fine,” Kyle reluctantly agreed.

Raven scowled and crossed her arms. “What a waste of a good plan.” She glared at Sinclair. He raised an eyebrow at her. “Fine,” she agreed. “Come on Wick, help me figure out what part of Arrow I should start banging on with my wrench.”

He nodded and followed her to the blueprint station. He wasn’t going to argue anymore. She’d said his lunar station was a good plan. 

Sinclair watched them go, nodding his head in satisfaction. “Stay on task, Mr Wick. Ms Reyes, make sure he stays focused on the scrubbers, and not his lunar station.”

“You got it, Boss,” she said. Raven grabbed Wick’s arm, as if that would make him focus better. As if he wouldn’t follow her anywhere she wanted to go.

**Author's Note:**

> Raven is coming. 
> 
> In the mean time, I thought about who of the delinquents he might already have met. Clearly Raven. He has a previous, "antagonistic" relationship with her, and also knows about Finn, even if he might never have met him. Then Monty, who he calls "our boy." Clearly Monty was involved with engineering before getting sky boxed. Then I read a fic that reminded me Jake Griffin was the head of engineering, and considering ages and time line, Wick would definitely have been there during Jake's tenure. And if Jake was his boss, then it is entirely possible that princess Clarke would make an appearance in engineering. 
> 
> And then there's Bellamy. There's no evidence that Wick meets Bellamy on the Ark. But I love Wick. And I love Bellamy. That is all.


End file.
